#and the unique romance cutscenes they can get with each other!! actually so sweet.

[forcedhesitation]

I love that the bg3 guys are all written to have this intense adoration of karlach and lae’zel’s abilities to absolutely eviscerate their enemies. they’ve all got the same taste in women, which is “she could gut the big scary man chasing me, and then princess carry me to safety in her blood spattered arms.” and I respect and relate to that, as a bisexual man myself.

[sage-nebula]

Game Review — Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

In the past, I was never really one for farming sims. In fact, I used to pass on every single Harvest Moon game because the idea of farming just didn’t seem fun to me. Then I heard you could have same-sex romance options in Stardew Valley, so I played that, fell in love, and thus got very excited for the newest Story of Seasons game, since I knew that Story of Seasons was Harvest Moon previously, and Harvest Moon inspired Stardew Valley.

And all I have to say is . . .

Overall Score: 5.5/10

. . . oh boy.

Well, I actually have a lot more to say than just that, but that should give you a general idea of what the rest of this review is going to be like. I do want to say up front that I have played through the entire first in-game year to give the game a fair shake, so please trust me when I say I did my due diligence to give this game a real chance before I reviewed it. If you’re ready, jump under the cut (best read on my blog for formatting reasons) and let’s get into it. 

The Pros: 

The character customization, while not perfect, is definitely several leaps in the right direction. None of the clothing or hairstyle options are gender locked, which is amazing. There is a variety of skin tones to choose from. You pick your pronouns independently of everything else, voice included, so you can 100% have a trans character if you want to (or a nonbinary character if you don’t mind using gendered pronouns for your nonbinary character). I do wish the clothing selection was better (especially at the start, when you only have two outfits to choose from) and having different body types would be cool as well, but the fact that you have so much freedom with regards to gender presentation is a definite plus.

Likewise, being able to have same-sex relationships is a huge plus as well. Honestly, it was what convinced me to pick up the game; I might not have gotten it if it didn’t have that option in there, but that pushed me over the edge. I mean, the fact that it’s 2021 means this sort of thing should be expected, but with Japanese games on Nintendo systems it’s really not always guaranteed, so the fact that it was included still does deserve to get a mention as a plus.

It’s easy to raise affection with the villagers by just talking to them, which is an improvement over Stardew where you pretty much had to give gifts to raise affection (because I don’t think talking did it, or if it did, it was abysmally slow). I was able to unlock heart events pretty quickly just by running around the town and talking quickly with the villagers each day, which is particularly nice since the preferred gifts can be pretty expensive at first.

I enjoy that not all of the heart events necessarily involve the farmer, especially for characters that aren’t romanceable. It’s nice to see the villagers interacting with each other more, to see that they have lives and relationships outside of the farmer’s sphere of influence. It also gives you unique insight into the characters, because how they act around or with each other isn’t always how they interact around or with the farmer.

Being able to sow seeds in multiple patches of dirt at once is nice, especially since otherwise it takes much longer than it does in, say, Stardew. I mean, in Stardew you can hold the A button and sow everything at once, whereas in Olive Town you have to do it one press at a time. So to be able to do a multi-plant is very nice.

The pet and mount selection is pretty great, too. I love how many different types of breeds of dog there are, how many different cats and different types of horses, and of course the unique mounts like the unicorn or the wolf. 

The farm has a lot of space once you unlock the different areas, and is divided into neat sections to make organizing easier. 

Having not played a Story of Seasons game before this one, and knowing that Stardew Valley’s developer was inspired by Harvest Moon, I can’t say entirely which features were unique to Stardew and borrowed and which ones Stardew borrowed first. However, I have seen others claim that the tool bar at the bottom of the screen (which is nearly identical to the one in Stardew) was unique to Stardew, so I can say that this is one area in which they copped something from Stardew and did it well. The fact that you can put your tools into a separate tool bag to make some emergency room in your bag is nice too.

The Neutrals:

While there are a lot of villagers and they all have their own heart events and interactions, the day-to-day dialogue can get very repetitive. I can’t tell you the amount of times Laura has told me about losing track of time during Laura Things, or how many times Jack has told me about how his mom told him about planting different crops and he thinks that’s just too much work. The dialogue only really seems to change around festivals / after plot changes, and it can really make characters that might otherwise feel fleshed out feel more like . . . well, NPCs. Which they are, but you don’t really want them to feel like that in a sim game. So while the characters are (mostly) unique, sometimes they can feel a bit repetitive.

The plot is a bit weird. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s weird that the plot focuses on wanting to turn the local town into a tourist hotspot. I get that the idea is that they want to bring commerce into the town (I guess), but that everyone is on board with it and the fact that it’s essentially gentrification just feels a bit . . . weird, for a game that’s supposed to focus more on nature. The tasks associated with it also get very repetitive, and that’s not even talking about how you literally have to improve the roads and lamps twice to make a difference.

The holiday festivals are also pretty average. It’s either a cutscene, or a tiny minigame (or sometimes not even a minigame, but I’ll get to that). The minigames are charming, but they’re not something that I’d want to do the following year. You’ve done it once, you’ve done it a million times. It’s also strange that there’s not a festival to celebrate your farm at all, whereas at least in Stardew we had the Stardew Valley Fair and I hear that in past Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons games they had farm celebration festivals, too. It’s just a bit strange.

The music is hit or miss, and mostly miss if I’m being honest, but I’ll still put it here. The songs are too short; they loop far too fast, and often sound no better than you’d expect a game on the GBA to sound (especially that first cave theme, ugh). There are some nice melodies, but again, when I compare it to Stardew (which I know isn’t exactly fair, but also Stardew is made by a grand total of one person when this game had an entire team so I feel it’s at least a little fair), it’s a pretty big letdown in the music department.

The bachelorettes are not very unique. Like, they are different, you can tell them apart, but . . . the primary difference between Bridgette and Linh, for instance, is that Linh is Korean (and also looks like a child which I don’t like at all if we’re being honest) while Bridgette is white. Otherwise they’re both sweet and shy and have basically the same personality. Reina and Blaire are also pretty similar, in that they’re both outgoing party types. The main difference between them besides their hair color (brunette and blonde respectively) is the fact that one works at the museum while the other is a waitress. The only one who really stands out is Laura, and while Laura is great (and the one I chose to marry), it’s still disappointing when you see how varied the bachelors are. It feels like not a lot of effort was put into designing the bachelorettes, which is sad when you consider they’re kind of major characters since they’re part of the dating pool.

The Cons:

This game is AWFUL to play. How, you may ask? Well, let me count the ways:

To start with, the loading screens are atrocious. There are loading screens between everything that you do. You go to town? Loading screen. You leave town? Loading screen. Start your day? Loading screen. Go in and out of barns or coops? Loading screens. And they take ages, or at least in this day and age it feels like they take ages. Particularly when you go into town, immediately realize you forgot a resource you needed for an upgrade, and go back so you get back to back cutscenes, they’re fricking awful. I cannot believe that loading screens this annoying were necessary for this game. I refuse to accept that as truth. They absolutely could have cut out the time it takes to load had they spent more time on development instead of rushing this title out for the anniversary, and speaking of things they could have ironed out in development . . .

THE LAG. THE FREEZING. THE CRASHING. THE POP-IN DISTANCING. If I didn’t know that an entire development team worked on this game, I wouldn’t believe it. This game is, put simply, a mess. Even when my farm was brand new and had pretty much nothing on it, I was noticing framerate drops both in docked and handheld mode. I’m talking, I had maybe one coop and two planted areas for crops, and the framerate was noticeably dropping. And now that I do have more stuff on my farm? Not only is the lag atrocious, but the game can’t load everything on the screen at once and so things have to pop into view after a few seconds. You can see video footage of this here, which also features one of the delightful loading screens. And this doesn’t even get into how the game will randomly freeze, or how I’ve had it crash once already. And from what I hear, I’m not unique in this. The fact they had the nerve to release this game as finished when it performs like this just boggles the mind.

Despite the fact that the Switch has two control sticks, this game plays only with one. This means that you can’t, you know, aim your tools with anything but the main control stick. And when you’re both controlling your character and aiming with the same control stick, the latter gets pretty hard. This leads to me missing things with my axe or hammer even when they’re right in front of me, as well as taking a lot of damage from the cave enemies simply because I couldn’t get in the sweet spot to both hit them with the hammer and also not get hit myself, particularly before they escape. It adds a lot of unnecessary frustration because the controls are so flawed and imprecise.

Similarly, there is a sweet spot when it comes to harvesting or picking up items off the ground, and it’s impossible to determine what that sweet spot is because you don’t get a little aiming box for that. So you can be right on top of an item and unable to pick it up because you’re not in that sweet spot. 

Apart from the framerate drops, there is input lag as well. This is most noticeable when swinging axes or hammers, or trying to pet cows and other animals after milking them. And yes, I know it’s the game and not my Switch, because it’s not consistent (and also doesn’t happen with other games). Again, this is something polish and more time in the oven probably could have handled, but now it’s too late and just makes the game frustrating to play.

Technical, mechanical gameplay issues aside, though, there are still a ton of other issues. For instance: makers. Again, I can’t say if previous Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons games had these, or if they were invented by Stardew and copped by this dev team, but what I can say is that while makers also exist in Stardew, they are handled way better there than the absolute nightmare they are here. Again, to count the ways:

In Stardew, the makers can sit flush against each other and buildings, as well as flush against paths, making everything nice and not taking up too much space. Here, not only are the makers gigantic, but they can’t be flush with anything. They can’t sit up against each other, against buildings, or against paths. This means that not only do they look ugly, but they also take up a tremendous amount of space that therefore can’t go toward anything else.

In Stardew there are a handful of makers that do things. You’ve got furnaces for making bars, mayonnaise makers, cheese makers, fabric spinners, etc. There’s a variety, but it’s not so much that your farm becomes nothing but makers. By contrast, Olive Town is drowning in makers. You have all the above, but also more that contribute to those because . . . okay, let’s take the fabric spinners for example. In Stardew, you can put any type of wool onto the fabric spinning wheel, which will make one kind of fabric. In Olive Town, you first have to have a thread maker to make thread out of grass, AS WELL AS a yarn maker to make yarn out of wool. THEN you have to have a thread fabric maker to make fabric out of thread (and the thread differs depending on the grass used, which means you can make many different types of fabrics, but only one at a time), AS WELL AS a yarn fabric maker to make fabric out of yarn. So whereas in Stardew you have one maker if you need cloth, in Olive Town you need at bare minimum two, at max four, and that’s not even getting into how slow the process will be if you only have one of each kind. Because each maker only makes one of an item, and then you usually need multiples of that one item to make the next item in the series. So for instance, your thread maker makes one spool of thread, but it takes THREE spools to make one piece of fabric. Then you might need TEN pieces of fabric for a recipe. And the makers all take literal in-game hours to make. When you consider that the costs for some things are very high (the house upgrade I’m on right now requires 80 ingots and 120 pieces of lumber), you pretty much have to have at least four of each type of maker to get things done at any kind of reasonable pace, hence the factory hell my farm is currently in as seen in the above linked video. It’s a fucking nightmare.  And yes, maybe it’s more realistic that you can’t go immediately from wool to fabric, but this is a farming sim where you interact with spirits, ride unicorns, and befriend wolves. This is not a game where you need to push realism.

The mining is also just . . . not fun. At all. Not only do you have the “it’s really hard to aim properly, especially when you’re trying not to take damage” issue mentioned above, but there’s also the fact that there’s just no variation. In the first mine there are no enemies at all, you’re just breaking rocks. The second mine introduces enemies, but only one type of enemy (basically little moles that you have to whack with the hammer). The third mine has the same enemies, but they’re stronger and appear in multiples. And that’s it. Unlike in Stardew, where there were tons of different monsters that did different things that made the mines exciting, here it’s pretty boring because the enemies are easy to avoid (and it’s best to avoid them because of how much of a pain in the ass to hit them without taking damage from running into them is) and the levels all pretty much look the same. Whereas I loved dungeon crawling in Stardew, here it’s something I purely do to get ore to make ingots in the stupid fucking makers because there’s literally no entertainment value to it otherwise, especially since the music is subpar at best.

Related to the mining, when you defeat enemies or drain lakes you can find bags of items that need to be identified at the museum. You can only have Reina identify these bags one at a time. So it’s a bunch of spamming the A button and hearing her go “oh!” over and over and over again because they, for some reason, couldn’t implement identifying items more than one at a time. And the best part? Identifying items comes with a LOADING SCREEN between you selecting the item to be identified and Reina identifying the item! How fun!!

You can really tell that they cut corners in this game, content-wise. For instance, the first festival in spring is an egg hunt. You would think that it would be a minigame where you look for eggs (again, like Stardew). You would think that, but you would be wrong. Instead, you get to watch an extended cutscene of your character finding eggs. That’s it. That’s the “egg hunt.” I skipped the mushroom hunt in fall because I assumed it would be the same, but apparently that one actually was a minigame, so joke’s on me, I guess. But either way, the fact that the egg hunt wasn’t an egg hunt at all speaks to cut corners and rushed dev time, just like the myriad of other problems that plague this game. It’s pretty bad when you can’t even include an egg hunting minigame for whatever reason (or at leas come up with unique events for spring and fall).

There is a ton of furniture with which to decorate your house, which is great! Or it would be, if you were actually given freedom to decorate, but you’re not. You can buy whatever furniture you want, but there are very specific places where you’re allowed to place it, and nowhere else. For instance, furniture and rugs can only go in the little space in front of your counter in your house in the first two house upgrades (Log Cabin and Small House). This space is very small. Despite there being a GIANT ASS FLOOR with which to cover a rug, I wasn’t able to use it until I got the third house upgrade. You have a huge empty table that you’re not allowed to put anything on. You can’t move any of the furniture around, nor can you rotate furniture that you buy when you place it. You also can’t place furniture on rugs either. Seeing so much furniture in the game is pretty exciting until you realize that you can do basically fuck all with it. Apparently they didn’t have enough time to implement real decoration into the game either. (Then again, imagine the lag in your house if they did.) As a final complaint, you can buy picture frames that claim to let you place framed memories in your house. You have a camera as an in-game tool, so you’d think that you could place pictures of your pets or your love interest in your house. You would think that, but you would be wrong. There’s no way to change the pictures in the picture frames, or at least none that I’ve been able to find just yet.

Just like Stardew, when you first arrive at the farm in Olive Town you find that it has been completely overrun with nature, and you have to spend time clearing away the debris so that you have a place to build your farm. Unlike in Stardew, the debris comes back at a ridiculously fast rate. Several in-game hours, if not more, of each day are spent cleaning up puddles (even if it didn’t rain), breaking rocks, clearing weeds, and chopping trees. Your farm can easily become overrun with nature again in just a few days’ time, meaning that a lot of your time that you would spend doing things like scavenging the mines or talking with villagers is instead spent doing basic, boring chores around the farm so that you still have livable land. And while farming sims like this one are games that are basically built around doing chores at least in part, the extent of the damage in this one (given that it happens all day every day, instead of just at the start of each season like in Stardew) really kills any fun or enjoyment you’d otherwise have as a player.

Farm upgrades come as entirely separate buildings, rather than expanding on the current building you have. So while in Stardew you could turn your existing Barns into Big Barns (and then Deluxe Barns), in Olive Town you have to buy an entirely separate building, and then painstakingly move all your animals to the new building one by one. Similarly, you can buy a silage to upgrade from your silo, but you’ll still have the silo on the farm. It doesn’t upgrade your existing development at all, despite being an upgraded form of that existing development.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Pioneers of Olive Town has some good ideas, but ultimately the terrible gameplay and lackluster execution of those ideas leaves so, so much to be desired. I will say that a patch was released recently which improved the loading screens a little, and for that I added the .5 to the score. (I took notes on things I liked / disliked / was neutral on as I played, so that I wouldn’t forget anything.) But a slight improvement to the loading screens doesn’t do much to help it when the lag is still terrible, the game still has freezes, and overall the gameplay itself just isn’t very fun. I probably will keep playing it for a bit longer to get to the marriage scenes at least, since I’ve almost maxed out Laura’s hearts. But honestly, there are so many better life sim games out there (the oft-mentioned in this review Stardew Valley being one of them) that if someone asked me if I recommended this game to them, I would have to say no. 

Let’s hope the dev team does better with the next game. Maybe not feeling the pressure of it being the series’ anniversary will take some pressure off of them while they make it.

[lamiahypnosia]

The Outer Worlds Review

When the Outer Worlds was announced I was kind of on my back foot about it. Private Division made a huge deal about how they were the one who made the original Fallout and Fallout New Vegas- you know, that Fallout game that you actually like that wasn’t made by the devil Bethesda.

And as the kids say ‘weird flex but okay’. Every time a new game releases, especially a new intellectual property, people always whisper about how money was being passed around to get good reviews. I don’t know about all that. But I do know this.

The Outer Worlds is not Fallout: New Vegas 2. So sorry. 

I posted a meme recently that made the joke that the Outer Worlds was Borderlands New Vegas  but that wouldn’t strictly be true . I haven’t actually played Borderlands extensively but yeah a space Western is very much like other space Westerns- there’s an old saying ’ there’s nothing new under the sun.’ People make frequent comparisons to things because they feel familiar.  ‘If you like Fallout you’ll like this’  But I’m going to stop comparing it to anything else. Is this the start of a new IP that can stand shoulder to shoulder with other great titles? Let’s find out.

Story The story of The Outer Worlds should be very familiar to any sci fi nerds worth their salt. Earth is uninhabitable because of war and humanity shoots to the stars, so you and a few thousand lucky people get placed on two ships -Groundbreaker and Hope- to fast forward ten years via new technology called skip drive until you get to your new home of Halcyon. Only the Groundbreaker made it and the Hope was lost, adrift until a scientist named Dr. Phineas V. Welles decides to see if anyone on the Hope is still kicking. Without much more explanation other than wanting to wake up the rest of the colonists you’re rudely awakened, dropped onto the planet Terra 2 and told to find a smuggler.  

Halcyon is a colony run by corporations- people live for their company, are owned by their company and under certain circumstances dying is a crime. Advertisements race by on robots and are pasted or projected onto every wall all controlled by the mysterious Board. But there’s something rotten under the corporate jargon and mandatory happiness and it might be up to you and Phineas to save the colony- that is, if you, the Unplanned Variable, see fit to do so. All the sci fi tropes are here- a smartass computer AI as your pilot and navigator, alien monsters, corporate greed, weird technology and mad science. The Outer Worlds is a game you can play with your brain turned off as a wacky sci-fi adventure or  you can uncover the secrets of Halcyon and the Board and use them to become a hero or simply come out on top with your pockets full or a mixture of it all. Pick your poison. It’s still not a game that takes itself very seriously, at ALL even when a nerve shattering revelation ramps the stakes through the roof. Are you savior or scourge? It’s entirely up to you. Sidequests

There’s plenty to do on every level of immersion on The Outer Worlds.  The game doesn’t really reward you for checking every nook and cranny apart from finding random bodies which becomes horrific in hindsight once you reach the endgame and learn what they probably actually died from. But as far as material things you get loot. Poke around a bit can net you some unique weapons such as a hammer that does all the status effect damage, a shrink ray and a cannon that fires slime that suspends its victims up in the air and drops them like a bad habit. 

There’s not many ‘collect ten bear butts’ type quests thank the Law but damn near everything is optional and the sheer amount of solutions for quests will have you planning your next play through. 

The best side quests are the companion quests which are so good I’m not going to spoil them but they all span the length of the game since they require reaching places that the player will only be able to travel to during certain parts of the story. Presentation The dialogue is excellent as per Obsidian standards.The voice acting is great, fairly natural sounding but when the actors have to perform instead of just reading they almost always do a bang up job.  Screams of pain after getting sprayed with venom during combat, the cries of alarm if you or another companion is wounded or the out of breath declarations at the end of combat however are a nice touch. The music is provided by Justin E. Bell, the low key background music with bold brass and mysterious woodwinds, or soft piano and strings but the occasional steel guitar sneaks in to give the smaller towns that run down feel. The various jingles of all the omnipresent corporations will get stuck in your head, however. Among my favorite tracks are Hope,  Forever, Phineas Escapes, and the title theme simply titled Hope. The gorgeous moving theme is also a leitmotif throughout the game from the level up sound to the cheery ragtime version. I can’t gush enough about how beautiful the score is. 

Visually the game is stunning, from the stifling cold marble walls of Byzantium where the men in power dwell in their ivory towers to the long stretches of frontier on alien worlds populated by bizarre creatures and filled with strange and sometimes deadly plants, sulfur pools and giant mushrooms The Outer Worlds really is a feast for the eyes, polished, clean and bright. The darker areas might drive you bonkers but thankfully nothing you really need is going to be in the super dark anyway.  If only the character models were as good but with an AA game budget, what are you gonna do? You could have cutscenes with finger puppets as long as they still keep their great dialogue. Seriously, I don’t remember laughing out loud at a game’s dialog or with such frequency probably since Dragon Age:Origin. Derivative humor is fun every now and then- I ran across a weapon, a hammer for sale called Maxwell where the flavor text mentioned ‘you think it should be silver’ in reference to the Beatles’ tune Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, or a dialog selection where you can tell the quest giver ‘Aliens’ to which she relies ‘I’m saying it was aliens’ so some music nerds and internet meme lords are thrown a bone but most of the humor is good old fashioned timing and even a few visual gags such as in the opening where Phineas has trouble opening the door. While rated M it’s pretty tame- I’d feel okay playing this in front of my Mormon in-laws because apart from the frequent swearing the humor is mostly clean. From my very first play through I counted five dirty jokes which you could easily miss and when you loot human bodies they stay clothed. The companions -your crew on the Unreliable- are spread out through the game and are met under circumstances ranging from a suggestion to hire them through Phineas or simply strays picked up for kicks and giggles. There are six companions in total-  Parvati Holcomb, a sweet gal from the starting town who knows her way around an engine, Vicar Maximilian DeSoto, a priest of the Order of Scientific Inquiry, Dr. Ellie Fenhill, a surgeon turned pirate (who is featured in the trailers!) Felix Millstone, a rebel without a cause or a clue who romanticizes all your adventures, Nyoka Ramnarim-Wentworth III, a hard drinking hunter and wilderness guide, and SAM, a sanitation and maintenance robot who spouts only company slogans. The companions can be customized to suit your playstyle from their unique perks to armor, weapons and fighting preference but most players end up with a favorite team though there are perks you can take if you’re the kind who likes to fly solo. While the companions all have their own clear cut reasons for joining your crew, treat them right and they become close to the player character and each other. Aww. They all have something to say in just about every situation and like in many modern RPGs will bicker and banter with the player character and each other. Listening to the characters play off one another is ten kinds of fun. My biggest gripe is how there’s no new one on one dialog with them at certain points in the game apart from new banter or a comment about goings on before going right into the same dang old dropbox of questions. Oh well. Some players get their hackles up about there not being romance but I don’t feel a lack. If you want extensive babblings with your minions go play a Bioware game.  What’s wrong with a good old fashioned tale of true companions?

Final thoughts

I admit after going through the first three hours or so of the game I was going to slap a ‘standard sci fi’ label on The Outer Worlds and hang it up for a while. Thank the Law I didn’t. 

The main quest coming in at a lukewarm thirty hours, The Outer Worlds is crying out for DLC and the way things go we’ll probably get more than one. Overall it’s fun- it’s a fun ride with crazy weapons, colorful characters, plenty of laughs and it just might tug at your heartstrings. 

When you take away the wishing, complaining and comparisons The Outer Worlds is a breath of fresh air amid the reforgings and refunds. I joke a lot about how I’m drinking the tears of New Vegas stans for getting heckin’ bamboozled but good on them for having standards. I’ve been hiding my extreme disappointment in Fallout 76 for a long time- full disclosure, it legit makes me sad and angry between Bethesda and Blizzard caring more about money than making fans happy and the table scraps we get in place of enjoyable content. 

I haven’t been happy with a new release since World of Warcraft: Legion. That’s been four agonizing years in a wasteland of mediocrity that I’ve slogged through in the vain hope of something renewing my faith in the industry. Maybe The Outer Worlds is just standard sci fi goofs but it does stand out among all the moody gritty art pieces most modern games have become.  I’m not sure what the future holds but I’ll be cautiously hopeful, adrift in lower orbit waiting for the next adventure.

[squidproquoclarice]

Sadie and Arthur's relationship frustrastes me. I played the game and took their scenes as flirting, like the whole Rhodes trip and even when she called him "honey" it was def not out of common courtesy. Every time I mention this on the Reddit though, I get attacked - "it's not flirting!" Like... Am I the only one taking this all as a romantic POV? Same with her saying Arthur is the best man she's known while the low hr he's the best friend? Like they say it was Charlotte but no way !!

Reddit can be a rough place, from what I’ve seen, and it seems like there are very firm opinions there about Arthur’s love interests.  In the greater sense, dude, y'all can ship whoever you want, because that’s the badass thing about fandom.  So long as it’s two consenting adults not hurting each other, fandom is your playground, and we’re all the better for it.  :D

Objectively, if we’re trying to discuss this as “Who was the cut love interest?” and divorcing it from any kind of opinion of “This is the only ‘real’ Arthur ship”, let’s go for it.  For Charlotte, I love that storyline, but I don’t see her as the love interest (maybe the woman she is in 1907 would have a shot, but not 1899).  She couldn’t have gone on missions with him.  She literally just lost her husband.  And it works as a story of two people who never would have met ordinarily coming together and making each other better, and Arthur having the chance to selflessly give of himself to help someone in need to help teach her to survive–the sheer patience and generosity of Arthur as a teacher in moments like hunting with Charlotte, fishing with Jack, and running the stagecoach job with Lenny gives me feels, I swear–and Charlotte seeing that goodness in him and validating it with her own kindness.  It’s a beautiful interaction, but pretty platonic.  That kiss on the cheek is lovely because it’s a genuine moment of human tenderness which Arthur really, really needs, but I don’t see it as anything but a sweet “thank you” on Charlotte’s part.  

Objectively, though. part of why I ship Sadie/Arthur is that I feel strong groundwork for it was pretty clearly laid in the game, and the indications seem to point hard to her being the intended love interest that was cut.  Like I’ve observed before, they immediately hit an easy banter on their Rhodes excursion that’s unusual in his interactions with women, and it continues into a strong dynamic in Chapter 6 where there’s still some of that lighthearted ease, but the mutual support and validation of each other is pretty intense as they go off on missions together.  She’s of a close enough age to him (early thirties, by the look of her) that it makes sense there.  He sketches her.  He writes admiringly about her.  She’s said, in her char descrip, to be “loyal to those she loves [emphasis mine]”, and we see how fiercely loyal she is to Arthur, to the point of trying to stay by him until the end, indicating the “love” mention is probably significant.  As observed, she very specifically compares him to her dead husband in terms of admiration for him, and she could have just left it as “You’re one of the best men I know” which would have been strictly platonic validation, but the comparison to Jake is a pretty strong romantic indicator.  She calls him “honey” and makes it obvious she wants to protect him.  There are a few unique relics in gameplay he doesn’t seem to have with others in camp, like the specific animation of her slapping him if he’s being an antagonistic asshole, and the fact that her item request occurs as a cutscene with additional dialogue rather than just the “Thanks!” you get from others.  All in all, Sadie is set apart in numerous small ways.

There feels like there’s something missing from her story, and her relationship with Arthur, given how she skips from the Shady Belle battle to being our fierce badass gurl in Chapter 6 holding the gang together.  I buy into the fan theory that Chapter 5 was bigger than just Guarma, and happened in New Austin/Blackwater too, and Sadie was far more involved in those missions.  There are screenshots of Sadie and Arthur in that area, riding out together, and the odd emptiness of the area in-game seems to support there having been plans there, plus there’s proof that Arthur has journal entries, the end of the dinosaur bone quest which requires access to that area, etc., so he was intended to be in those regions at some point.There’s mention that the love interest specifically had missions they did together, and Sadie and to some degree Karen are the only women riding with the gang acting as a triggerwoman.  Mary-Beth, Tilly, Molly, Susan, and Abigail really aren’t.  And I don’t see Karen as the love interest, though the same arguments could be used as are used for trying to claim it’s Mary-Beth (sharing a dance, having a counseling session), given her involvement with Sean, and grief at his death.  There are also more shots of Sadie on-mission that never showed up in the game (walking with the gang in Valentine in Chapter 2 or 3 given Sean is there, with John and Arthur at Bacchus Bridge with the dynamite, etc).

All in all, Sadie virtually has to be the cut love interest.  Like I said, I say that as part of why I ship it because it laid a great dynamic and strong groundwork that still remain there, but again, that’s not me saying Sadie/Arthur is somehow the only valid ship.  Fandom’s your playground, remember?  ;)  And I wish we had more of that cut content for her character to further develop some of those gaps, but I actually give R* some credit for not pulling the trigger–no pun intended–on a Sadie/Arthur romance in-game.  They’re both not in a good place.  And they made the choice at whatever point for Arthur to die in the end.  They seem to have backed off the love interest angle then, realizing that it “didn’t make sense [from a storytelling perspective]”, which seems to fit only Sadie in the end, or perhaps Karen.  There’s nothing keeping him from a tragic romance with Tilly or Mary-Beth or Penelope Braithwaite or anyone else.  But if we look at it objectively,  for a female character lose a deeply beloved husband violently, unexpectedly find love again so soon (almost too soon, IMO, which I think is part of why it “didn’t work”), then have that new love violently taken from her, and have both those deaths occur within about six months, is a pretty shitty thing to do to her.  To their credit, they seem to have chosen to not do Sadie dirty just so that Arthur could die having experienced a fully requited and validating romance.  And that’s unusual, because we all know plenty of female characters whose needs, or even their lives, have been sacrificed for a male character’s emotional journey.

So what we got is actually the best of both worlds.  There’s the respect for Sadie’s grief and their mutual emotional and psychological turmoil, but clearly, they do love each other.  The fact that it’s not transformed into a romantic love in-game doesn’t keep it from being a fairly profound platonic love that strengthens both of them at a terrible time in their lives (and unfortunately still hurts Sadie in losing it given her demeanor in the Epilogue) and promotes platonic love as being valid and valuable.  Like–I wish Arthur could only see how loved he actually is, by Sadie, by Hosea, by Abigail, by Lenny, by Jack.  And given more time after Chapter 6, like I’m writing in Sunrise, it’s easy for that love between them to eventually develop into a romantic love, while still having all the caring and support of a slow “friends to lovers” arc rather than focusing on romance from the get-go.Thank you for coming to my RED Talk.

[slothssassin]

Dragon Age Questions

Tagged by @starsandskies, thank you! ♥

Tagging @briarfox13, @liaorban, @katajanokka, @tessa1972 and @nerdierholler.

1. Favorite game of the series? It’s really hard to decide. Whenever I play one of them, I really enjoy it and think it must be my favourite. If I could play only one forever though I’d probably choose Inquisition.

2. How did you discover Dragon Age? I played Mass Effect and was active in the fandom here. So I discovered that a lot of people who loved ME also played (and loved) DA. I already had Origins in my library, so I thought why not give it a try.

3. How many times you’ve played the games? Well, I started DAO once but never finished it. A few months later I started a second time and then played all three games. So DAO (almost) twice, the other ones one time.

4. Favorite race to play as? (Dalish) Elves all the way!

5. Favorite class? Both my Warden and my Hawke are Rogues, but technically I always played the Mages in the team. That’s why I decided that my Inquisitor would be a Mage too, and in the end it’s honestly my favourite class to play.

6. Do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions each time. I mostly make the same decisions again.

7. Go-to adventuring group? DAO: Alistair, Wynne, third one changed, but mostly Sten or Morrigan DA2: Fenris, Anders, Varric DAI: Blackwall, Dorian, Varric, often also Cassandra

8. Which of your characters did you put the most thought into? I’d say my Inquisitor Sellia Lavellan.

9. Favorite romance? Well, Alistair x Warden is really sweet and adorable, but I’m also a big fan of Cullen x Inquisitor. I have to say I enjoyed the cutscenes between them the most.

10. Have you read any of the comics/books? Nope

11. If you read them, which was your favorite book? -

12. Favorite DLCs? Trespasser I think? Or Jaws of Hakkon cause I really liked the Frostback Mountains.

13. Things that annoy you? Uhhhh the combat?? Especially in DAO. I mean I love the games but the combat can get really hard, repetitive and annoying. I was glad my Warden was able to sneak cause I sneaked past a lot of enemies, especially in the Deep Roads. DA2 started with great combat but got boring around Act 2. Inquisition had the best combat for me.

14. Orlais or Ferelden? Ferelden.

15. Templars or Mages? Mages.

16. If you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one? I only have one character in each game.

17. What did you name your pets? (mabari, summoned animals, mounts, etc.) Ashera’s mabari was called “Brutus”, Marlow’s “Atilla”, Sellia has a horse called “Shiral”.

18. Have you installed any mods? Yes quite a lot actually. Most are for the CC. But in DAO I also had the one to skip the Fade, a few to add more content with Alistair. Clothing mods too. I love mods a lot.

19. Did your Warden want to become a Grey Warden? She didn’t mind. She was up for the adventure, though she didn’t know how dangerous it would be.

20. Hawke’s personality? Between blue and purple.

21. Did you make matching armor for your companions in Inquisition? No, they’re all unique.

22. If your character(s) could go back in time to change one thing, what would they change? Ashera lost her father as a child. He tried to save her from a bear. She’d always go back to help him.

Quite similar for Marlow, she’d like to go back to save Carver. And her mother later on.

Sellia would turn back time to go back to the Fade to try and save both Stroud and Hawke.

23. Do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon? Yes, I headcanon that Alistair stayed a Grey Warden after the Blight, but Anora got assassinated. He was already married to Ashera at that point, but agreed to become the new King if he didn’t have to officially marry anyone else.

24. Are any of your character(s) based on someone? No.

25. Who did you leave in the Fade? I honestly hated that decision. And it was the reason why I made up the headcanon I mentioned earlier. I didn’t want to leave either Alistair or Hawke, so I chose Stroud but felt really bad about it. My Hawke didn’t feel like herself anymore, so I’m still thinking about leaving her instead, which means Alistair could stay a Warden.

26. Favorite mount? The Imperial Warmblood.

[moonah-rose]

Mass Effect and Sherlock (Tin-hatting fandom)

After replaying the Mass Effect trilogy I’ve been looking back on all the controversy that happened after ME3 was released, in particular the ending(s).

For those unaware, Mass Effect is a space opera RPG video game series. One of its biggest appeals is how much the player’s decisions affect the story; from sacrificing one of your crew, to condemning a race to genocide, to who to romance. There are many, many variables to make each playthrough truly unique. So when Mass Effect 3 came out, the grand finale, a lot of gamers were extremely disappointed to find that the ending reflected very little on the choices you had made throughout the game.

Oh, you had a choice. But the cutscenes were all nearly exactly the same, only with a different colour filter depending on what you chose, and the offscreen implications of certain consequences. You didn’t get to see if the alliances you had formed between warring races would last or if certain characters you loved had survived. It was all left up to the player’s imagination. 

Fans were really pissed off. But other than just ranting about it, some went a step further and believed the endings weren’t even real. This was not without context. An underlying theme throughout the trilogy was the idea of the enemy indoctrinating people into serving them. Fans created some brilliant theories based on supposed clues and hints they had picked up on during the game that the choice given to the player at the end, as well as the rushed images that follow, were all an indoctrinated illusion planted by the enemy - and that this was to be revealed in the promised DLC, which would give the game its “true ending”.

TL,DR; Fans of the series were pissed at the ending, among other story elements, and so came up with a clever and believable theory that it was all fake - an illusion in the main character’s head.

Sound familiar?

I don’t think Mass Effect is the first to do this. I never watched LOST, but I remember hearing some people believe that ending was fake as well, and that a secret follow-up film or spin-off would follow to reveal the truth. With LOST, that never happened, as far as I’m aware.

But with Mass Effect, it kind of did. 

Not the indoctrination theory itself. The creators have always defended that was the ending intended (aside from story elements that were apparently changed after a leaked script pre-release, so the rumours go) and none of the DLC that followed changed that.

However, because fans felt so cheated by the original endings, Bioware released a free DLC that expanded greatly on the endings several months later. If it hadn’t been free then one could have accused them of intentionally baiting people to pay for a better ending. But this one, while keeping the same story, added important details to help give closure. The effect of each final choice was VASTLY more explained and shown after the decision. The allies formed, planets doomed and characters saved were actually seen - even though most of it was still images, it was better than nothing. One of the biggest questions in the original ending was seeing two characters apparently die and then reappear safe, briefly, at the final scene without explanation - the DLC added a scene in that also served as the player being able to give an emotional goodbye to their love interest/favourite team member.

That wasn’t the end of Bioware helping to give much better closure to the players, however, after we’d had so many years to bond with these characters. A final DLC came out which may as well have been titled Fanservice. Aside from one cheesy Die Hardy mission, most of it was just focused on hanging out and having a party with the charcters. Some fans dubbed it ‘the Christmas Special’ DLC, despite it not having any mention of festivities. The cheesy yet heartwarming feeling was the same, ending with a sweet goodbye almost breaking the fourth wall. 

Speaking personally, in this case I was never too upset about the endings, in terms of story, at least not as much as others. The execution of the original ones was very disappointing but I was thankful for the DLC extras. There are still fans to do this day who believe in the Indoctrination theory, in spite of the DLC and the game being five years old. But I felt the story works well enough and, especially with the Citadel DLC, I’m always left with a feeling of contentment and satisfaction which I think is what I look for in all film, tv or video games, no matter how tragic or happy the endings are. 

So finally I get to Sherlock and the EMP theory.

I’m hoping I’ll see the ‘cycle continue’, to use a Mass Effect phrase. The EMP theories I’ve read are just as brilliant, clever and almost crazy enough to work as the Indoctrination theories are. I hope to keep reading them. But I don’t think they will be revealed as canon. :( I think Series 4 really is what Mofftiss intended and what they thought was a good direction to go with the show. Some people really seemed to agree with them it was good. I don’t get it but...oh well. It is what it is.

But if that’s the case, the little I am hoping for is that Mofftiss, like Bioware, acknowledges the feelings of those who were deeply disappointed and recognises the possible flaws. That’s not asking them to change the whole story and especially not to force Johnlock to be canon if they honestly don’t intend it. But just be adult enough to see our point of view and not just brush it aside as ‘fan backlash’. If the most we do get in the future with Sherlock and John is a one-off Christmas special as soon as Ben and Martin can fit in the time to film, then I just hope it is something that gives me a much better sense of closure than the ending to S4 did (which just raised more questions than answers). Remind me why Sherlock and John’s friendship is supposed to be the best thing ever. Remind me why I loved this show, even if that means some fanservice. 

I’m not sure if that would be enough to wash the bad taste of S4 out of my mouth. But then S3 left me with mixed feelings and TAB boosted me right back up again (perhaps too high). Anything is possible.